"Mark?"
"Ya?"
"There's some girl outside staring at the loft."
Mark stepped out of his bedroom and over to the window where Roger stood.
"Is this a setup?"
Roger just gave him a look, and then turned back to the girl outside. She stood on the sidewalk in front of the building, fidgeting and biting her lip with apparent indecision. A long, well-tailored jacket reached her knees, but she kept her arms clutched around her torso in an attempt to block off the late October bite in the air. Her white-blonde hair was tied up tightly and her ponytail bounced as her movements grew more and more impatient.
Roger shifted his weight uncomfortably as her gaze flickered once again to the loft.
"Man, she's freaking me out. I'm gonna go see what she wants."
As Mark made his way back to his camera, Roger climbed out onto the fire escape.
"Hey, lady!" he called down to her. "You need something?" He said it almost rudely, still uneasy at the woman's staring. She looked at him with large blue eyes and mumbled something incoherent.
"What?" Roger called, frustrated by the strange woman, but she only bent her head and stared at her shiny black shoes.
"Hang on," Roger muttered and stepped back into the flat. He crossed the room, grabbing his jacket and the key, calling to Mark as he went, "Some rich bitch. Probably lost or something. I'll go help her highness out of this peasant's village." Mark snorted from the other room as Roger slammed the door for effect.
Outside, the sun still shone with the reminiscent of summer, but the air was crisp, foretelling a cold winter on the way. Roger made his way over to the woman, who stood skittish, like a wild horse suddenly penned down.
"Excuse me," he said; more politely than before, "you seem out of your element. Are you lost or something? You need help getting out of the neighborhood?"
She stared at him, those wild eyes full of fear and distrust of the strange man standing only steps away.
"I'm…looking for someone," she ventured uneasily, suddenly afraid to look him in the face.
Roger's first thought flips to The Man, but no, this polished young woman, as strange as she was, didn't strike him as a junkie. Besides, there are surely high-class dealers in the Upper East Side or wherever the hell she came from.
"Who?" he asked simply, suddenly curious of the person who could draw this kind of woman to this kind of place.
"My…husband," she replied, but it was nearly a question. Her uncertainty hung in the air between them and Roger resolved then to help her out, no matter how weird her presence here was.
"Would he be around here? Someone I would know?" Roger asked her, once again thinking of The Man's clientele. A flighty husband might end up this side of town when trying to keep the bloodhound off.
"Maybe," she said softly. "He used to live here; in this building." She ran her eyes over the building's rough exterior, up to the loft and back down again.
"You want to call him or something? You can come up if you want to use the phone."
The woman stared at him for a moment, obviously uncomfortable with the idea of following a strange man into a ramshackle apartment on the wrong side of town. Slowly, she shook her head. "I've already tried him," she said, pulling out a black cellular phone to show Roger, and then hastily shoved it back in her pocket.
Roger leaned back onto a nearby streetlamp. "Need some company until the bugger shows?" he asked, and to his surprise, she nodded. He had yet to mug her, rape her or shoot up there on the street; she began to relax a little. Roger pulled out a cigarette, held it between his teeth and offered her one. She refused politely and watched as he lit up. "You got a name?" he asked casually.
"Alison."
Roger nearly swallowed the cigarette. "Alison Grey?" She nodded solemnly. "And your husband – Benny?" Again, she affirmed it. "Holy shit," Roger mumbled, and then started to laugh. He knew exactly where Benny was that afternoon. The walls in the building weren't very thick, and neither were the floors. He'd spent the afternoon trying to block out the voices in the apartment below; the voice of his cheating ex girlfriend and the voice of his yuppie scum ex roommate. "Nice to meet you, Alison. I'm Roger."
He watched Muffy's wide eyes double in size with recognition. "Oh my god," she whispered. "Benny…you're his old roommate…oh my god."
Roger bowed dramatically to her, then leaned back again, grinning like a Cheshire cat, a hundred new questions running though his mind. "So, you're looking for Benny. This is the first place you thought to look? His deep rooted emotional attachment to this place?" her asked mockingly.
Muffy's eyes clouded. "Do you know something, Roger? Do you know where my husband is?"
Roger looked up at the tone of her voice and stared at her, taking in her face for the first time. Though she was young, younger than Benny, younger than Roger, he face was lined with worry and something deeper. Her hair, pulled back so smartly, was losing its hold; strands of flyaway fell over her forehead. Her pink mouth was turned down in a perpetual frown. Living with Benny, something Roger was all too familiar with, had taken its toll on the young woman. A year and a half of marriage, Roger could see, had stripped a once-emotionally full girl of something that her family's money could never buy back. Roger didn't want to pity her, the woman who lived in wealth, the woman who slept with no fear of death or AIDS or the coming winter. But he did pity her because he wouldn't ever want to live like her.
Before he could answer her, before he could confess all he knew of Mimi and Benny, the door of the building was pulled open. Benjamin Coffin III stood blinking in the October sunlight, frozen with shock at the figure of his wife before him.
"Alison. Baby. What are you doing here?" Benny crossed to her and put his hands on her shoulders.
"We need to talk, Benny," Muffy said smoothly, and Roger watched her fall back into the poised woman she wore a mask to become.
Benny glanced at Roger, his unease flowing off of him. "Let's go home, Baby. We'll talk there."
And without another word to Roger, the two set off out of Alphabet City. Roger climbed the stairs to the loft, past Mimi's door and through his own. He settled onto the couch with his guitar, strumming mindlessly as the events of the afternoon ran through is mind.
"So who was that girl?" asked Mark, coming into the main room.
Roger smiled. "Like I said, just some rich bitch. I hate those people who have everything. They don't know a thing about real life."